Husband and wife astrogeologists who made numerous contributions to the
study of impact craters on Earth,
lunar science, asteroids, and comets.

Eugene Shoemaker had hoped to travel to the Moon as an Apollo astronaut/geologist.
When this ambition was sidelined by a health problem, he helped train other
astronauts in geological methods for use on the lunar surface. He was also
a major investigator of the imaging by unmanned Ranger
and Surveyor spacecraft which, before any
Apollo landing, revealed the nature of the Moon's cover of soil and broken
rock that he named the regolith.

In 1994, Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David H. Levy
discovered the short-period comet Shoemaker-Levy
9, which was subsequently seen to collide with Jupiter. Following his
death in a car accident, some of Gene Shoemaker's ashes were placed aboard
Lunar Prospector, a spacecraft that was
later intentionally crashed into the Moon; his are the first human remains
resting on another world.